The rise of an armed opposition has provided the Syrian regime with the justification it needed to seek to crush it with ever bloodier repression, notes Patrick Seale.

Middle East Online

The Syrian crisis is no longer a purely Syrian affair. Its wider dimension was highlighted on 4 February when Russia and China cast their veto at the UN Security Council, thereby aborting a Western-backed Arab Resolution, which had called on President Bashar al-Asad to step down. At a stroke, the debate was no longer simply about Syria’s internal power struggle. Instead, with their vetoes, Moscow and Beijing were saying that they too had interests in the Middle East, which they were determined to protect. The region was no longer an exclusive Western preserve under the hegemony of the United States and its allies.

Russia has decades-old interests in the Middle East, in Syria in particular. As a major customer of Iranian oil, China does not approve of Western sanctions against Tehran. Nor does it take kindly to U.S. attempts to contain its influence in the Asia-Pacific region. There is a hint in the air of a revived Cold War.

The Syrian crisis has, in fact, been a two-stage affair from the very beginning -- internal as well as international. On the internal level, the uprising has aimed to topple the regime on the model of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In this increasingly ugly struggle, both sides -- government and opposition -- have made serious mistakes. The government’s mistake was to use live fire against street protesters who were -- at first at least -- demonstrating peacefully. The crisis could perhaps have been defused with the implementation of immediate reforms. Instead, mounting casualties have created enormous bitterness among the population, reducing the chance of a negotiated settlement.

The opposition’s mistake has been to resort to arms -- to become militarised -- largely in the form of the Free Syrian Army, a motley force of defectors from the armed services, as well as free-lance fighters and hard-line Islamists. It has been conducting hit-and-run attacks on regime targets and regime loyalists. The exiled opposition leadership is composed of a number of disparate, often squabbling, groupings -- of which the best known is the Syrian National Council. Inside the SNC, the Muslim Brotherhood is the best organised and funded element of the opposition. Outlawed since its terrorist campaign in 1977-1982 to overthrow the regime of Hafiz al-Asad -- an attempt crushed in blood at Hama -- it is driven by a thirst for revenge.

No regime, whatever its political colouring, can tolerate an armed uprising without responding with full force. Indeed, the rise of an armed opposition has provided the Syrian regime with the justification it needed to seek to crush it with ever bloodier repression.

Casualties over the last eleven months have been heavy -- estimated at some 5,000 to 6,000 members of the opposition, both armed and unarmed, and perhaps 1,500 members of the army and security forces. There is necessarily an element of guesswork in these figures. As in all wars, the manipulation of information has been much in evidence.

Inside Syria, therefore, the situation is today one of increased violence by both sides, of sectarian polarisation, and of a dangerous stalemate, slipping each day closer to a full-blown sectarian civil war.

The second level of the contest is being played out in the international arena, where Russia and China, with some support from other emerging powers such as India and Brazil, are challenging America’s supremacy in the Middle East. Washington’s outrage at the challenge was evident when U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton angrily dismissed the Russian and Chinese veto as a “travesty.” Escalating the crisis, she called for an international coalition to support the Syrian opposition against what she described as the “brutal regime” in Damascus. She has encouraged the creation of a “Friends of Syria” group, with the apparent aim of channelling funds and weapons to Bashar al-Asad’s enemies.

At the heart of the international struggle is a concerted attempt by the United States and its allies to bring down the ruling regimes in both Iran and Syria. Iran’s ‘crime’ has been to refuse to submit to American hegemony in the oil-rich Gulf region and to appear to pose a challenge, with its nuclear programme, to Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly. At the same time, Iran, Syria and Hizballah -- partners for the past three decades -- have managed to make a dent in Israel’s military supremacy. They have in recent years been the main obstacle to US-Israeli regional dominance.

Israel has for years demonised Iran’s nuclear programme as an ‘existential’ threat to itself and a danger to the entire world, and has repeatedly threatened to attack it. Its fevered gesticulations have pressured -- some might say blackmailed -- the United States and the European Union into imposing crippling sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and its Central Bank.

The real issue, however, is one of regional dominance. Iran’s nuclear programme poses no particular danger to Israel. With its large nuclear arsenal, Israel has ample means to deter any would be aggressor. Nor would Iran willingly risk annihilation in a nuclear exchange. However, a nuclear-capable Iran -- even if it never actually built a bomb -- would limit Israel’s freedom of action, notably its freedom to strike its neighbours at will.

Israel is at pains to restore its regional dominance which has recently been somewhat curtailed. Its invasion of Lebanon in 2006 failed to destroy Hizballah. Its 2008-9 assault on Gaza failed to destroy Hamas. Worse still from Israel’s point of view, the war attracted international opprobrium and damaged Israel’s relations with Turkey. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has put at risk the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty which, by removing the strongest country from the Arab line-up, guaranteed Israeli dominance for 30 years.

Israel’s current strategy has been to get the United States to cripple Iran on its behalf – in much the same way as America’s pro-Israeli neo-cons pushed the United States into war against Iraq, a country which Israel had then considered threatening.

The United States has also suffered grave setbacks in the region: its catastrophic war in Iraq; its unfinished conflict in Afghanistan; the violent hostility it has aroused in the Muslim world, particularly in Pakistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa. It, too, is striving to retain its pre-eminence over the oil-rich Gulf States. Some Washington hawks may think that the overthrow of the Mullahs in Tehran would put the United States and its Israeli ally back on top.

Because of their own apprehension of Iran, the Arab states of the Gulf have allowed themselves to be drawn into the conflict. They seem to fear that Iran may endanger the existing political order by stirring up local Shi‘a communities. With Qatar in the lead, they joined the United States and Israel in their assault against Damascus and Tehran. Perhaps belatedly aware that a regional war could be catastrophic for them, there are signs that they are having second thoughts.

At last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, Qatar’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Khalid al-Attiyeh, declared that an attack on Iran “is not a solution, and tightening the embargo will make the scenario worse. I believe we should have dialogue.” That is the voice of reason.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).